this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2024
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[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 months ago (3 children)

The potato blight was a natural disaster.
The famine was caused by the British exporting the same amount of potatoes out of Ireland as before.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They didn't export potatoes out of Ireland, they exported everything else. Meaning there was no other food but potatoes for the Irish to eat.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

That, the rent system, and the British actively preventing aid (not at their expense!) really turned a bad situation into a full-blown genocide.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Also, monoculture, but yeah. Points at Cavendish bananas.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

The Irish at the time also grew wheat and meat and everything else that was grown on the British Isles back then. The problem was the colonising English owned all the land and exported all the food

Potatoes were the emergency food, the only thing Irish could grow and eat

When Irish were dying of starvation the farms they were forced to work were growing plenty of wheat and sheep

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago